The Economics of Golf

0:00David McWilliams: To understand the economy, you have to understand human nature. This podcast is powered by Acast.

0:14David McWilliams: This special episode of the podcast is brought to you in a partnership with Sky Sports and Now. Because John, we're going to be talking about one of those rare sporting events that transcends the sport itself. The Ryder Cup. Yeah, I mean, it's not only golf fans that get excited. The Ryder Cup has become one of those global spectacles, like the Super Bowl or the World Cup, where suddenly everybody's talking about it, even the people who wouldn't normally sit down and watch 18 holes. Absolutely right, and the timing couldn't be better for Ireland because golf has never been stronger. We've had Rory McIlroy's Masters win, but he's just won the Irish Open at the K Club, and the grassroots participation is booming.

0:55David McWilliams: from kids' golf camps to women taking up the game in record numbers. Even those new social driving ranges you see popping up are packed. Exactly. Golf is buzzing in Ireland right now, and the Ryder Cup is the jewel in the crown. A team event, a multi-format showdown, a biennial battle that's as much about pride and drama as it is about sport. And intercontinental drama and sporting occasion, John. So in this episode, we're going to explore what this golf surge means for Ireland, not just in terms of the sport, but the economy too. From tourism to broadcasting to local clubs filling up, golf is becoming a real economic driver here.

1:38And of course, if you don't want to miss a single shot from Bethpage Black in New York this weekend, there's only one place to watch it. All three days of the Ryder Cup is exclusively live on Sky Sports.

1:51David McWilliams: So if you're a Sky customer, you can upgrade to Sky Sports today for just 20 euros a month for six months. And if you don't have Sky, no problem. You can stream all the action and the drama with a sports membership from now. That's 20 euros a month for 12 months. Cancel any time. So whether you're a hardcore golf nut, a weekend hacker, or just someone who loves the big sporting events, then this weekend's Ryder Cup is a must-watch. So John, let's get into this. Let's talk about the economics of golf, which may be the best-placed person to explore this in Ireland. Donald Casey, the former chief executive of Rory McIlroy, Inc.

2:35David McWilliams: Let's go and talk to Donald. Great. So we are now, as you know, doing a podcast on the economics of golf. Golf is played by many millions of people around the world, but many hundreds of thousands in this country alone. I think it's one of the most popular sports in Ireland. Except for us, Mike. Except for us, I know. So John and I are committed non-golfers. But that doesn't mean we're not interested in it. We just have never swung a club. And I also believe it's a very hard, hard game to play properly. I'm not sure we have enough time left in our lives to perfect golf. Perfect that swing. But one man who does understand the economics of golf is our next guest, who was Donal Casey, who was for a decade the chief executive of Rory McIlroy, Inc.

3:26David McWilliams: So if any man understands the world of golf, it's Donal. He's in the basement. He's in the HQ. Donal, how are you? Welcome to the HQ. Thanks very much, David. Thanks for having me here. Not at all. Listen, it's an absolute pleasure. And again, what I'm saying is somebody who really understands the economics and the business of golf. Just one thing I want to start. I read a statistic the other day about per head of population, just how successful Ireland is in Gotham. This is Ireland, the island, including the north, in terms of winners of majors in the last 20 years. Yeah, it's extraordinary. So Ireland, obviously we started with Padre Carrington in 2007.

4:06He won three. Then it rolled into Graham McDowell, won the US Open in 2010, Darren Clark in 2011. and then Rory started with his first of his five in 2014 and Shane in 2019. So like per head of population anywhere in the world, it's the most majors in the last 20 years, which is a, I think sometimes we don't even understand ourselves how big this is. And, you know, in such a global sport, you know, 100 million people probably play it globally. How come little old Ireland could be so successful? So the answer is reasonably simple. It's really around accessibility. Like the sport is played everywhere in Ireland.

4:42it's very accessible compared to other countries, even England. Scotland is probably the only comparator in terms of accessibility. It's way more accessible than it is in the US. You know, it's an everyman game. All of those major champions come from humble beginnings. So it's a bit like you write about it sometimes in accessibility to education. So everybody in Ireland can get into college, which means that any super bright person gets the opportunity to express their talent. And it's kind of the same in golf. Like if anybody on the island of Ireland has a natural talent for golf, they will probably find their way to a golf club.

5:22They will probably find their way to a program. And they will get to express it. And then they get to be nurtured and developed. The game in Ireland is a very natural game. We've got the elements. We've got the courses. We've got the, you know, there's a very good program of tournaments at underage level. So if you're good, the process will find you. You will be discovered. And that's kind of where the five of them have come from. And obviously, Podrick, he kind of led the way. He broke the mold. I knew Podrick very well right at the beginning of his career. And he just had an extraordinary mindset.

5:58Like, you know, it's not that he was the most talented golfer in the world and he would tell you this himself. But he ended up having an extraordinary mind for it. In terms of his focus? Well, no, and just in terms of being a... He kind of understood golf, the real essence of it, which was like, you know, it's not how good you are. It's what you make of the game. Like, the game is kind of a philosophical pursuit. Explain that to me. It's like what you said at the beginning in the intro. It's a very hard game. It's a capricious game.

6:29David McWilliams: Yes. Like, it's a game of highs and lows. It's extremely difficult to play at their level. at the majors level. And you need an unbelievably strong mind to be able to do it. And that's what Podrick had. You know, he just, he always found a way to shoot 71, even if he was playing badly. And then funny enough, if you can find a way to shoot 71 when you're playing badly, then you'll find a way to shoot 65 when you're playing well. On a good day. And all of a sudden, if your bad days aren't that bad and your good days are good, the next thing you're kind of going up to the ranks, you're playing in Ryder Cups, you're winning tournaments.

7:05and then all of a sudden you're competing in majors, you're challenging in majors, which, you know, he did for several years before he won and then he won three in two years, which was, and that then opened the floodgates for everyone, you know, Graham McDowell, Darren, they look at him and say, well, if he can win them, I can win them. Yeah. And it kind of leads, you know, you do a little bit.

7:26David McWilliams: It's a sport near Zahiro and it's somebody you know who's local who's done it. Yeah, so you get a little cascade effect and then, you know, so we've had five major champions in a very, very short space of time, having waited 60 years for Padraig. Well, I mean, it's extraordinary. Compared only to a game like tennis, where it's a singular game. Yeah. Where Ireland has never, ever come anywhere close to producing, even we've produced good tennis players, but tennis players who can really compete. So the difficulty of getting to the top, I suspect, in golf is akin to something like tennis. Oh, very much.

7:59David McWilliams: You really need academies, culture, accessibility. As you said, if the kids are good, they need an avenue through which they can actually progress. But I want to ask you about this psychology of the course. Because when I'm listening to golf, let's say on the radio, it's on, or I'm watching the telly, or we're going, you know, towards the end of a major, what I hear commentators talk about is mental toughness, psychology, emotional balance, all these factors. Yeah, resiliency. You know, it's just, it's an extraordinarily difficult game with extraordinarily fine margins between winning and losing lots of randomness you know lots of bounces that you know you can hit exactly the same shot and have very different outcomes you know with very marginal differences so you really need a mindset that kind of is willing to absorb all that randomness and you say look i have to just play the cards that i'm dealt i have to deal with what i'm presented with i have to deal with the elements as they are and it's amazing how few people get there you know the biggest trap in golf is the pursuit of perfection you know that you there's some formula out there that i can kind of squeeze the randomness out of the game that's the actual that is the trap and that's the road that's the road to mediocrity really though that's the road to hardship it's the road to poverty it's the road to nowhere there is no perfect you don't want to go on that road that road is no good for any of us well you're talking about the psychology of golf there as well i know it's a definitely a mood changer because when friends of mine go out and have a bad night and go it changes the mood entirely yeah they're brutal for the terrible yeah shite pint doors there's no crack it has the full spectrum of emotion you go from the agony and ecstasy is kind of within their they're traveling in very close proximity and right until the very last hole you can go from kind of a joyous experience to be to it absolutely distraught walking off you know if you have a terrible i've seen it so it's a it's that's the joy of the game no of course that is the joy because it's actually unbelievably unpredictable yeah and that i presume is what keeps people it keeps the itch it keeps you going oh i'm gonna get back there but let's talk about the economics of golf we'll talk about the macro before we talk about the micro okay the top line figures it seems to me like all sport in the last 10 years, that the money in golf has exploded.

10:29David McWilliams: Explain to me what's going on, the big trends. Okay, so the big trends, I mean, it is like the money has exploded. So we'd start with the professional game, but the professional game is actually a very small part of the overall golf pyramid, which is an enormous global leisure pursuit. So there was a billion rounds of golf played last year. Wow, that's mad. Which is a huge number. But we'll just go back to the professional game. So the money has exploded, which has happened in football. It's happened in other sports. It's happening in tennis, where, you know, obviously Live Golf came in as a disruptor.

11:04So the total prize funds in Live are 400 million.

11:07David McWilliams: So explain to me what Live Golf is. So you're talking to a real novice here. So imagine this is like first year economics, first day of economics. Okay, so the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia looked around the world and obviously are in the kind of rebalancing of Saudi Arabia's economy from a complete reliance on oil to kind of a broader tourism, you know, national rebranding exercise. Obviously, there's lots of things happening in sport and in cultural, you know, all of that. So the stuff we've seen with Ronaldo and all that sort of thing. Yeah, so quite sensibly, they would have looked across the cultural spectrum and said, golf looks very interesting to us because it provides us with an avenue into very interesting networks, both economically and, you know, in diplomacy.

11:54We'd like to get involved in golf. They kind of tried to come in. There was a brief period of, you know, trying to come in to the sport like they've done in other sports, which is kind of as part of the existing infrastructure, but then decided, no, we're going to disrupt this sport. And one of the reasons they were able to disrupt it is that it's kind of uniquely fractured. The players are all self-employed. They're kind of independent contractors.

12:21David McWilliams: There's no clubs, for example. No clubs. There's no leagues. Yeah, no leagues. Well, there were leagues, but they're not, you know, the players are free agents, which makes the thing very, you know, quite fragile from a disruption perspective. So the authorities came in and said, we're going to set up our own league in opposition to the existing ecosystem and did that in 2022. and so they obviously introduced a huge new player. It's like a single market. Suddenly now you have a new competitor who's throwing vast amounts of money into the market. So they went from zero to 400 million in terms of prize money, which meant that the PGA Tour, the previous kind of monopolist in the game, had to go to 400 million and then there's all the other leagues.

13:06So now we've probably gone from, in just five years, I'd say, from a total prize money in the game of like 300 million to well over a billion. So the players, the courses have probably, certainly the average golfer's pay has gone up by two to three X, which is quite similar in soccer. You know, it's gone in, you know, so that's a huge kind of new entrant and it's just made the business of golf. Everything then goes up, you know, everybody gets paid more.

13:37David McWilliams: And then does the TV rights sort of change? Is that dynamic that's changing as well? Yeah, well, it's interestingly, the TV right deals are done in kind of 10-year cycles. So that really hasn't been, you know, the last cycle just predated Live. I mean, they're the biggest page, like in all sports. The media rights check is the biggest check. Yeah. And that's what funds a lot of the game. You know, the media rights, they've been, I wouldn't describe it as struggling, but like viewership, you know, golf, one of the things about golf, the viewership is quite small relative to, you know, other sports.

14:13You know, the Sunday telecast in the US will have 3 million viewers, which is very, you know, it's smaller than a college football match on a Saturday. But the thing about golf, you know, one of the key attributes of the economics of golf is just the participants are so affluent. Yes. There's time, you know, if you want to talk about a game being really difficult, and it's relatively expensive, not hugely expensive in Ireland, nothing like it is in the States, as I said. You need to be affluent in time and money and then it's like a drug, as you say, it kind of captures people. So they become very price insensitive then.

14:51Most golfers will pay anything to get better. There's a constituency of golfers. Yeah, it's a drug. You just want to be better and you want to have your bragging rights over your mates and you just want to be able to hit it further than them. One of the kind of earliest people who really saw this was Eli Calloway when he set up Calloway Golf. And they brought out the first kind of big Bertha driver. And they understood, he was the one who understood, I can charge 3x for this driver. It's kind of 20 % better.

15:21David McWilliams: Yeah, if it makes my player that tiny bit better. It's discernibly better. And it definitely goes further. But I'm not going to charge 20 % more. I'm going to charge three times more. And people were willing to pay it. they couldn't make it quick enough, which kind of gives you an insight into the economics, you know, of the kind of recreational golf. There's quite a constituency there who, you know, are very captured by the game, you know, want to play it, will pay a lot of money to get better and are always in this kind of pursuit of getting better. Like far bigger than the professional, if you build up the market, the global economics of golf, like professional games, quite small.

15:59David McWilliams: Yeah. It's kind of like... It's the flagship shot winner. It's the pinnacle of the thing. So that's what we all see, we all watch. Yeah. So much bigger than that is the golf tourism market. Well, let's talk about that. Yeah, so the golf tourism market, which is huge in Ireland, like we get 220 ,000 visitors. Just to play golf? Just to play golf in Ireland. Yeah. And these are, like this isn't applied to all of them, but for a lot of them, these people are the most price insensitive tourists that ever come to Ireland. You know, the classic golf trip to Ireland is they fly over, certainly business class, possibly on their, you know, one of their private jets.

16:37They land in Dublin Airport. They either stay in Sleave Donard or the Marion or the Shelburne. On the East Coast, they play Port Marnock, Baltray, Royal County Down and Royal Portrush in their kind of first leg. And then they go down and stay in Larney or Adair Manor and they play Le Hinch, Ballybunion, Waterfall and Tralee and maybe the Old Head and maybe Adair or whatever. and in 10 days they've had this kind of extraordinary experience. When I talk to some of the golf operators or whatever, these people do not care what anything costs. Like there's no haggling about anything. And how much is around the golf?

17:14Like what are the green fees? Oh, the green fees are...

17:16David McWilliams: That's what I was going to ask. The green fees are, you know, on the really, you know, the classic, the top 10 links courses in Ireland. Yeah. You know, it's three, four, five, six hundred. You know, it's five hundred. Just to play, to play 80 holes. Yeah. Right, wow. And, you know, they're booked up in one day. Yeah. So Le Hinch would release their tee times on a certain day. All the tour operators, you know, a big chunk of them would be block booked. And their entire inventory for 2026 would be sold in one day. And it's the same in... In all the major courses. But can I just ask you, just to circle back to one of the things you said earlier then, you talked about accessibility.

18:00If green fees are 400 or 500 quid and a lot of the top courses are booked up, how is it accessible to your average Joe? So the 400 courses, 400 plus courses in Ireland. And even within the top 10, it's not like all the tea times go to the Americans. But quite a small number, quite a small amount of the tea times cover the whole cost for the year. That's fascinating. And then, you know, they have lots of the good tournaments on these courses, like in Port Marnock or Royal County. You know, they host boys' tournaments and, you know, the elite amateur tournaments. So people do get access to them.

18:41You know, it's a different, if you come as a member guest, you might be paying€25, whereas it's€500 for the Americans. So there's a kind of dual pricing. It's like the Oasis.

18:51David McWilliams: It's like going to see Oasis, John. If you're a massive Oasis fan, you don't care. You'll pay 400 quid. But it's true. So what are you saying is that there's a sort of a cross-subsidization going on. Yeah. Which, and maybe to answer John's question, is that Ireland has got to this kind of sweet spot where we can overcharge people who have no real budget constraint. Yeah. And that facilitates a flow of cash into the general golf community. Yeah. Which means that the average dude here doesn't necessarily have to shelve out anything like they might have to do in the UK and are in the United States.

19:29Yeah, yeah, I think that's fair.

19:31David McWilliams: And is there, like, so for example, is there in Gulf Ireland, are there strategists? Is there a financial plan? Is there somebody at the top thinking all the time about where we're going? What are the trends? Where we position ourselves? Well, I think a lot of it is kind of organic. A lot of it is, like, a lot of it just happens because the products are so good. Like, it's very finite, the world's linked golf courses. I don't know, I can't remember the number, but it's a very small number. Like it might be, there's only 200 Lynx golf courses in the world. These are the ones up on the seaside? On the seaside.

20:03Seaside golf.

20:04David McWilliams: I'm really, like, I am really, really, you're talking to a real Egypt here. Ireland and Scotland have, you know, the bulk of the world's Lynx golf courses, which kind of capture the imagination in America because they're so different. And not just in America, but like in Asian tours and Japan and Europe, everyone wants to play them. They're kind of spectacular pieces of property. It's very naturally exposed to the elements. It's very different from what the golf day would be used to. So it's kind of, we have this kind of natural resource. You know, as I say, it's a supply constraint really. Like you would feel more and more infantry if you had it.

20:40And golf, believe it or not, in Ireland now, and this comes from COVID, like golf was struggling for the 10 years before COVID from 08. You know, golf globally was kind of like in a 2 % decline a year. And courses were shuttering, not by many, but just small numbers, less so in Ireland. You know, so that was kind of the trend and it was seen as an older demographic sport. And we'll come back to this now in a minute with demographics. An older demographic sport that was in a kind of sunset and was struggling to capture new, the younger market who were busy and all of the rest. and what happened then was COVID.

21:21So if you'd wanted a strategy for golf and you'd looked at this 10-year kind of leakage or slow decline, you would have said, you wouldn't have got there, but like what you would have come up with for, if we want to turbocharge this unbelievable game, which has been around for hundreds of years and is kind of slightly stagnant, we're going to have a global pandemic and we're going to have everybody out of doors, young and old, and we're going to be naturally socially distant and people would say, oh, that's golf. So everywhere in Ireland...

21:49David McWilliams: I hadn't thought of that at all. Everywhere. So the pandemic was just an absolute... An absolute, no, gold rush for golf. I mean, golf is supply-constrained now in Ireland significantly. Every single club would have timesheet, like their timesheets would be full. You know, it's harder to get out. You know, it's... So the numbers have exploded since COVID. Yeah, exploded. Like club membership has probably gone up 25%. I mean, maybe there's 250 ,000 members excluding juniors, but there's another 250 ,000 playing golf who aren't club members. So there is the half million. That's huge. 20 % increase is huge in any business.

22:27David McWilliams: Yeah, yeah. And that's globally. So golf just went through this boom because we all had nothing else to do and it was just, you know. And it is a great game. Like there is, as I sometimes say, there is inherent truth in the game. Like it is a fascinating game. It never gets boring if you can kind of get over the canyon of learning it, which is not easy. But once you get there, it's a lifelong pursuit. It's very health-giving, very health-protective from all the walking. It's very socially protective because of the club structure. You know, it really is a great game. And it was just struggling to capture the younger demographic because, you know, we now live in a different world.

23:10The attention economy, it's four and a half hours. It's long and people don't have that time and busier lives. Obviously, the pandemic created that time. And, you know, you had a huge surge of under 35s who were thrown out of the norm.

23:29David McWilliams: So the demographic has switched, has it? Yeah. So younger people are playing a lot more. Much more younger people. And now there's this very interesting thing going on in golf, which is like the generational kind of challenge, which is like golf has a kind of heritage, tradition-based business, quite stuffy, very much around, you know, norms that are being built up over decades. That would be my interpretation of golf. Yeah, and that is a very fair interpretation. But now you have this kind of new, it's kind of meeting the Gen Z world, which is much more informal, much quicker, less stuffy, if you want to use that word.

24:07David McWilliams: But it's also the future. like a sport needs to grab kids. Can I just ask you, are there, who might be the next Rory's coming up? Oh yeah, there's lots of talent running through Ireland, yeah. I mean, you know, Ireland kind of naturally produces talent, both on the men's and women's side. Like Golf Ireland, when you ask the question of, is there someone up there with a strategic plan of trying to grow the game? There isn't, there isn't. Like it kind of has this natural momentum from the bottom. But what they do really well in Ireland is run an amazing calendar of tournaments, like both at the inter-club level and at the kind of each age and at the elite amateur level and mid-amateur level.

24:50Like there's a whole kind of suite of tournaments going on every week. You know, so in this kind of merging of Gen X and the kind of boomers and Gen Z, you know, the kind of meeting of those kind of generations, one of the biggest developments in golf is youtube influencers which is a completely new thing in

25:10David McWilliams: so it's kind of it's it's jumped over into into kind of the tiktokization of golf youtubers etc very much so like youtuber golf is where all of the growth is coming from like that's what's producing all of the gen z are these american based or irish they're all over the world you You know, it's obviously mostly American. But like if I pick someone that everyone will recognize. So the crossover, the intersection between Gen Z YouTuber golf and the kind of traditional major tournament golf that the kind of older, my generation would recognize, believe it or not, is Bryson DeChambeau. So he has the biggest YouTube following in golf, bigger than the PGA Tour.

25:55He's built a following of 2.4 million subscribers, So he has reached a generation that the traditional golf broadcast has not reached.

26:05David McWilliams: Right, because in other words, the traditional golf, when I see Donald Trump playing golf, that kind of accords with my view that, you know, golf is played by business guys, older guys, and what you're saying is an actual fact, the last few years you've seen a complete change in the demography of golf and consequently the economics of golf. Yeah, well, that YouTube phenomenon has kind of reached into the younger generation. And it's interesting you bring up Donald Trump, because Bryson DeChambeau's most viewed video, 17 million views, is playing golf with Donald Trump. Right. Of course. By the way, I've always thought that the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs, when the Trump relation gets really tricky, they should engage Rory as a sort of a shadow diplomat, the Trump whisperer.

26:54David McWilliams: when Trump is freaking out about us over tariffs. A couple of rounds of golf with Rory McIlroy, all done, all sorted. But absolutely yes is the question. Yeah, no, I'm serious. This is real soft power. It's soft power. So that's what I was saying about the Saudis. They were right. They figured out that if we want to maximize our soft power, possibly the most efficient channel to do that is through golf. you can access through golf all of the American presidents. Because even in my 10 years with Rory, I met Bill Clinton. I met George W. Bush. I only missed Obama, Rory playing with Obama by one day.

27:37But I was kind of, you know, I heard all about it and thing. I actually met Donald Trump. I had lunch with Donald Trump way back in 2015 before he was, and he was extremely conversant. You went for burgers, did you? No, it was in his golf club in Doral in Miami. And he was, you know, very charming in person, totally into golf. Yeah. Like completely authentically into golf. Are his courses good? Would they be known as some of those? Yeah, they're, yeah, the Blue Monster in Miami is a spectacular golf course. Yeah. So golf is an avenue. You know, that's kind of another part of the economics is, another insight from golf is like it is an insight into inequality in a way because you have these you know quite tight and dense networks of really supreme wealth like you know extreme wealth and the reason you have that is and i often refer to it as the adjacent wealth in the game because one of the other features about golf is you can play with the stars so it's like but you You can have unbelievable proximity and, you know, extended proximity.

28:47You play four hours round with the, you know, the best player in the world, whether it be Tiger or Rory or Scotty Scheffler. You have lunch with them afterwards. It's a very intimate experience. It's, you know, genuinely a money can't buy experience, even though the only thing that can buy it is money. But it's a, you know, it gives the game this unique...

29:08David McWilliams: I really agree with you. I think Gulf diplomacy is something that I've observed from the outside. Access, time, a certain amount of fanboydom on the part of the very wealthy. And these are incredibly emotionally potent factors for countries as well. It's a very powerful platform for Ireland. If you look at Irish, and one of the things I experienced in my 10 years in the Rory gig was how positively disposed America is to Ireland. You just have to say, I'm from Ireland and the whole atmosphere changes. And golf, where does golf fit into that? It's obviously not at the top, like Guinness, crack, scenery, heritage.

29:53But it's there. It's fifth or something. The thing about it is all these things,

29:59David McWilliams: I mean, again, this soft power, this is experiential notions. It's very, very hard to put your finger on it. but if you don't have it, you know all about it. And if you have it, you can sometimes assume it away. And I think that golf, in the mind of, let's say, corporate America, business America, politics America, looms very, very large. Looms very, very large. Oh, it does. Like golf, so within the business model, again, back to the economics of golf, within the business model of golf, hosting is a huge thing. So you think about all these tournaments and you wonder, so the players are playing for whatever, you know, really big sums of money now, 20 million for the biggest tournaments, 20 million dollars.

30:41It costs another 10 or 15 million to host it, to televise it, all the rest. So it's vast amounts of money. The people who are the kind of title sponsor are paying, you know, really big sums of money and you wonder why they're doing it. You know, because it's only so much of it is remunerated by the viewership. Some of it is, but not all of it. a big part of the business rationale is the b2b side of it so they are assured of having their top customers at the tournament because it's a very different experience when you're there as guest of the title sponsor and then obviously for the top customers they're in the pro-am and then for the very top customer or two they're playing with rory or playing on the tournament course on the day before the tournament.

31:28And this is a genuine, you know, it's a really incredibly powerful relationship asset.

31:33David McWilliams: So that brings me to the business of the very top of the game. You are one of the very few people worldwide to have had exposure to this, to be a controlling member of a very, very small elite sporting organization. Explain to me what it is like, the day-to-day pressures. Because when I look at golfers, when I look at the golf business, there's so much money involved in it, so much pressure, the margins are so fine, as you say, but the margins are fine, but the consequences of the fine margins are even bigger. What was that like? What was 10 years working at the top? I wouldn't describe it as pressure at all.

32:15Like, it was... You know, for me, as a complete golf nerd, it was just fun, like... How did you meet Rory McIlroy? Well, it's really too long a story. It's just a whole series of kind of coincidences. That's all. It actually started with Padre Carrington. You know, that's kind of the genesis back in the probably 15 years before when I was in Irish Life and we sponsored Padre Carrington. You know, so that kind of slowly. But there's a whole kind of, it's just a randomness on steroids. So you end up there and like there wasn't a lot of pressure because you're dealing with Rory McIlroy and like it was quite simple in my mind, which was he was a generational talent he was an extraordinary property you know that if you wanted to be associated if you wanted a partnership with him it was going to be an extremely premium price and that was it and if you didn't want it you didn't want it so like if you're a nike there's a price yeah and that's it like you could be you can be super confident with someone like rory because he's like the thing about it was almost everywhere you went in the world he was the most popular player it was kind of unusual you were kind of always trying to be intrigued by it and trying to say i wonder why and there was obviously there's some kind of subconscious dynamic going on there around freedom the way the expressiveness vulnerability was a word too that we used because you know he was boyish and people connected with that whatever it was i think it was a combination of this kind of unbelievable artistry you know freedom you know we all there's somewhere in our minds we all want to be that kind of free about our pursuit and then there was his kind of boyishness you know so there's he's not some kind of superman do you know i mean he was kind of very much every man in stature and so you had to you bring these two ideas together and so if you were in china if you were in you know if you're in dubai if you're in wentworth if you're in obviously anywhere in america you know everywhere you went like people responded and connected with him so that made it very easy.

34:16Like there was nothing in the marketing, you know, and then Ireland was just a great place to run the business from because it's a very business friendly place. We've got our low corporation tax. It was a very interesting and easy confluence.

34:29David McWilliams: It's interesting you say vulnerability because again, I'm watching from outside. That's one thing that Rory McIlroy seems to be. It's a combination of amazing ability and just the fragility of those last couple of rounds as you said the last couple of shots and we've seen mccleroy suffer you've seen him suffer and he and he wears it on his sleeve and when he won the major there a couple of months ago he's down on his knees you can see years and years of pressure just dispelling itself from his body yeah so people respond to that that's why so if you remember you well you don't because you're not a golf fan but if you were watching the telecast that day so like he's competing with Bryson DeChambeau, who is like this YouTube sensation.

35:15And he's playing with him that day. And there's obviously, Scottie Scheffler is kind of on the fringes of contention and other Americans. But the crowd has completely coalesced around Rory. You know, there's chants of Rory, Rory, Rory all the way through the tournament. And then when the scoreboards changed, which they do in Augusta, because it's kind of a unique experience when the scoreboards change. That's the only way scores are communicated around the course. when his scores went up, there was kind of cheers all over the course. So people do respond to that. People do respond to that kind of...

35:47I suppose it's just they feel they're seeing the real person.

35:52David McWilliams: Has Rory McIlroy just... Has he changed golf, do you think? Yeah, well, he's certainly helped golf. Yeah, but he's been around a long, long time. I mean, he's at the top for... Well, I think, you know, obviously Tiger's the original change agent, so he turned it into an athletic sport. you know, from a kind of feel sport. Yeah. Before Tiger, there were all shapes and sizes. It was kind of more like, not more like rugby, but, you know, there was... Rugby of old. Rugby of old. Rugby of old. You could be big and small, and it was kind of very much feel. And then Tiger came along and, like, was this kind of incredible physique and was an athlete.

36:28And was an athlete first and golfer second. And Rory has kind of continued that trend in terms of, you know, he's kind of defied his stature almost. And the thing I say about him, you know, his longevity is extraordinary. Like he's 800 weeks are closing in on it at the top, in the top 10 of the world, which is again a mind-blowing number. That is mind-blowing,

36:47David McWilliams: because that level of consistency is extraordinary. In January, he will be the second longest, and it's already baked in. He can't be out of the top 10 for the next probably 60 weeks. So he's already baked in at just below second to Tiger and is almost certainly trajecting above Tiger. And as I've said it before, above Federer in tennis. The longevity all comes from an insane work ethic in the gym because it's a physical... So he combines kind of this insane physicality with artistry that is, you know, really right-brained and creative and unbelievable touch, which people are only... So it's a very...

37:29It's an amazing combination.

37:31David McWilliams: It's a one-in-a-million combination. Yeah, it is. Donald, you were talking about resilience and mental strength. And clearly McElroy has it in spades. But, you know, how many tournaments would he play a year? And is there risk, surely, you know, if he's playing almost every week, is there a risk of burnout? Yeah, but he seems to be able to manage it. Like, he plays 20, 24 times a year. Right. And each one is more draining on him. Like, this week, the circus comes to Dublin, comes to the K Club. and so the whole circuit, you know, the traveling circus arrives. But he's the star. You know, he's the focus of attention.

38:10There's more drain on his time and on his energy than anyone else. And that's the same every week that he plays. So I think, you know, it is extraordinary how he does it. But I think the biggest part of it is his physical conditioning. He has always...

38:25David McWilliams: That's what they say about John all the time. They do, you know, Mac. They do. Let us focus on this week. The Ryder Cup. Massive, massive, big deal for golf, but big deal for Ireland. Big deal for tourism, big deal for branding. All the adjacent businesses, the hotels, people being, you know, the airlines, people being shipped in and out. What does it mean for a country, something like a Ryder Cup? Oh, it's enormous. Like, it's just a huge, like, it's not really about the week. And obviously it is, and people talk about the economic value added and all that stuff, and it might be 200 million or it might be 250 million like they measured it in Italy.

39:06But that's not the important part. How can Ireland get projected to the world for like, you know, 30 hours, primetime TV in America and all around the world and all around Asia and all these affluent people? It just kind of sows the seed. I want to go there. I want, you know, it builds an affinity with all things Irish. It's like what you said. Some things are very hard to evaluate. It's very hard to evaluate the impact of a Ryder Cup other than to say it's extraordinary. Like, we've just had the Open Championship up in Portrush. Yeah. Like, it's like having Wimbledon in Ireland. You know, it's like...

39:41David McWilliams: It's like having two Wimbledons on the island. Yeah. I mean, that's the amazing thing. Yeah. It's just hard to appreciate how wide and how long the ripples go. Like, you know, the ripples of the 2006 Ryder Cup are still present. You know, you still see the footage. it comes up on Sky Sports Golf every couple of weeks you know how the 2006 Ryder Cup was won it reminds that's rolling through the golf channel it's just like it's rolling through Sky Sports Golf and Adair Manor in 2027 will be just as big and maybe even bigger there's talk that Tiger would be the captain in fact seems very likely given that he didn't take it this time Tiger Woods would be the captain and kind of his affinity with J.P.

40:23McManus And that will be a kind of eye-popping event for Ireland. Like it's really hard to recreate it.

40:33David McWilliams: In your position as, A, you call yourself a golf nerd, but you're obviously a golf man. You're a golf financer. You've been working at the highest level. You're involved. You enjoy the clubs. You enjoy the courses. What sort of trends do you think will probably characterize the next couple of years in golf? well the first big the biggest thing in professional golf is to kind of resolve the live pga tour the kind of the saudis versus the civil war that's in golf and and i think that is going to resolve i don't know how it's going to resolve but basically you know there's new people in all the key seats there's a new commissioner in the pga tour a ceo there's a new ceo of live golf there's a new CEO of the European Tour, there's a new CEO of the RNA.

41:18So all these new people are going to sit around, they're going to say, well, how did we get here? We're going to have to come up with a more sensible solution than competing with each other like this rather than in some way collaborating. There's a pretty straightforward delineation in my view. Live is kind of like the rest of the world product and the PGA Tour is the American product. and, you know, some way, there's some solution there where the best players play more frequently together. Like that's what the golf fan wants. And then I think the other, you know, the shorter forms are, you know, it does have to come into the 21st century in terms of attention spans.

42:01And, you know, one of the things Liv did was to shorten tournaments to 54 holes. And that to me looks incredibly sensible in the, you know, the 72. And the TikTok age. The TikTok age, you know, 54 holes, kind of a bit, believe it or not, it's quite different from 72, even though it sounds like it's only a little different. It's kind of a sprint then, you know what I mean? You can't have a bad first day. There's only three rounds.

42:23David McWilliams: And will the type of golfer change then? Yeah, well, I think the type of golfer is changing. Like this growth in the COVID-inspired growth in that demographic, in the younger demographic, they have stayed with the game. They're being kept in the game, the YouTube influence, and they're consuming different content. they are going to stay in the game. So they will just want to play more. Like that's the thing. Once you play golf, you always want to play it. It's just hard to get into it. You've never kind of crossed, I call it a two-step canyon. You know, you have to make two steps. It's quite hard.

42:54The first step is kind of down into the canyon and then you get out to the far. It's getting out of it, getting out of that, the pain of learning it. But once you get through, once you make that second step and you can describe yourself as a golfer and you can kind of... it's like learning an instrument really yeah and once you learn it you never want to leave it because you you get so much fun out of it so could i ask you just quickly what about women's golf what's the standing of women's golf you know it seems to be on the rise as far as i can see yeah but is it does it have the same resources behind it or no that's a great question john i mean it's a personal interest of mine loads of reasons for one of them my daughter was an elite amateur golfer so i kind of really understand that landscape from a personal perspective like women's golf there's a couple of things about it one they are every bit as good as the men in terms of you know it's a 10-year journey to become elite they work incredibly hard it's actually more relatable as a game to stand you know for the average person to be at a women's golf tournament it kind of looks more like golf their their golf because it's kind of just the power of the men's game is kind of almost out of you know stratospherically away from what you experience and the biggest thing for the women's game is the is the gender pay gap like the women are playing for so this week we'll use this week so this week the men's irish open has been played for a purse of six million dollars right and last month in carton there are two months ago kpmg women's Irish Open was played for a purse of$500 ,000.

44:28So, and I could give you all the comparators, but it's broadly, like, if I just had to net-net everything out, it's certainly an 80 % pay gap, which to me is extreme, given what you see in tennis. Like, tennis is obviously of gender parity. Yeah. So it is catching up, but it's quite slow. The women's game is brilliant. What needs to happen, though, for it to catch up? Well, I suppose it does need some companies to champion it and kind of understand. But women's sport, this is the challenge faced women's sport across every sport. The problem is that women don't support the women's sport enough to kind of, you know, like all the purchasing, so many of the purchasing decisions in the world are made by women and I don't get why people don't see the power of being associated with elite women's sport because it's a very powerful platform.

45:23There's a very strong economic rationale. So I think it's just, you know, it's just going to take time. But I would describe the gap as just too big. Right.

45:32David McWilliams: And just lastly, is there anything that Ireland, Gulf Ireland can do to maximise the opportunity in this sport? I'm not sure because, as I said, that I do think a lot of the growth is kind of inherently bottom up and it comes from the kind of natural resources within the island of the kind of golf courses. Like we don't have to do a lot more. Like I think 14 % of every sporting euro is spent on golf. It's quite big. 500 ,000 people play it. You know, it's quite big in junior golf now. We just have to, I suppose, be aware and harness our kind of natural resources. Like obviously the next big thing is we'll have the Ryder Cup in 2027, but then the hope is that we'll have the Open Championship in Port Barnock in whenever, like sometime in the very near future.

46:26So that's a huge, you know, that really is Wimbledon coming to Dublin. And I think what policymakers in Ireland need to understand, it is a very powerful soft power platform and we are incredibly well positioned to exploit it. and that's what we should do.

46:42David McWilliams: By that stage, John, you and I will be out of the canyon into the second phase. I'm not so sure about that. Into the rough. Into the rough. You could be playing in the pro-am while there's no pro-am for the Open Championship, but I'm sure if you wanted it, David, you could. Donald Casey, absolute pleasure. Listen, this was really an insight into a world that I don't know much about. I can't say I know an awful lot, but I'm beginning to understand what's going on. So it's been a brilliant conversation. Thank you so much. Yeah, and thank you for having me.

47:12David McWilliams: That's it for this episode. And just a reminder, you've been listening thanks to Sky Sports, who are making sure that you can catch up with every drive, putt, and celebration from the Ryder Cup. Watch all three days of the Ryder Cup exclusively live on Sky Sports. If you've already got Sky, upgrade today to Sky Sports for just€20 a month for six months. And if you don't, you can still stream it live with a Now Sports membership. 20 euros a month for 12 months. Instant access, cancel anytime. So no excuses. Join the buzz because the Ryder Cup is the kind of sporting theatre you'll be talking about long after the final putt drops.

47:54David McWilliams: It's all happening Friday, September 26th to Sunday 28th. Live from Bethpage Black, New York. Thanks to Sky Sports for supporting this episode.

48:12Thank you.